No Zito in Seattle; now what?

The good news for Seattle is that Barry Zito has taken his 12-2 career record against the Mariners and moved on.

The bad news is that he didn’t come anywhere close to signing with Seattle. Instead, the Mariners saw him sign a seven-year deal with San Francisco, which allows him to remain in the Bay Area.

For most of his first six years in Oakland, Zito chose to live in San Francisco. Now he can live where he plays.

But what of the Mariners? They didn’t bid on Daisuke Matsuzaka. They lost out on Jason Schmidt. They lost out on Zito. Even Adam Eaton, who doesn’t have the anywhere near the credentials of the other three, couldn’t see playing for his home town team.

The odds are excellent that the Mariners are going to enter 2007 with a starting rotation — Felix Hernandez, Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista, Horacio Ramirez and either Cha Seung Baek or Jake Woods — that is, at best, no better than the rotation that ended the season in Seattle.

And given that Jamie Moyer, traded mid-season, isn’t around, the Mariners don’t even have the experience that would be needed for the kind of rotation Seattle was hoping for when the off-season began.

There are trade possibilities, to be sure, but any trade the Mariners make for pitching is going to short the club in some other area. A move to send, for example, Adrian Beltre or Richie Sexson out for a premium starting pitcher, even if it could be pulled off, would leave the club short at either third base or first base.

And the players the club is more able to sacrifice in a trade, like center fielder Jeremy Reed or first baseman/DH Ben Broussard, aren’t going to bring back top-end pitching.

Even the knowledge that Randy Johnson is out there doesn’t count for much. For one, the Yankees are going to want top prospects in exchange, and the Mariners have precious few of those. And $16 million (or a little less, depending on how much of that contract the Yankees would cover) would be cold comfort for a pitcher in his mid-40s, even if he is a one-time Seattle icon.